


Showrunners

by ghuune



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Cockles, Everybody knows, M/M, tinhat!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:43:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5816389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghuune/pseuds/ghuune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two times Jensen had to speak with the Showrunners, and the two times they listened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Showrunners

VI. OCTOBER 29, 2011  
“Darius,” Misha said, “go get something to drink.”

Misha stared at Jensen from his position by the window, which had a view of city lights that Misha didn't turn to see. There was only one lamp turned on, but even in the gloom, Misha's eyes were still cobalt blue. 

The slumpy little dude named Darius crept by Jensen's side, leaving space between them as though Jensen were radioactive, and escaped. Jensen relaxed as soon as the latch clicked into place, and he turned around and threw the lock.

“Hope he has somewhere else to sleep,” he said.

“You think you're staying here?” 

He shrugged. “Two beds.” Purposely missing the point, and they both knew it. 

He went to him, since Misha still hadn't moved, frozen in the position he'd been in when Jensen opened the door.

He pretended to ignore Jensen's closeness, but his shoulder swayed towards him, he tipped his chin to watch him. The familiar heat kindled between their bodies. 

Jensen traced the bag under Misha's left eye. “You haven't been sleeping.” 

“No, I have not,” Misha said, turning away from the touch, rolling his eyes. “Wonder why that could be.”

“Don't be like that.” Jensen tipped his head, trying to catch Misha's gaze, but the man turned his back on him and walked to dresser, to the half-empty bottle of vodka, which he poured into a water glass and sipped. A good sign. If Misha were truly not open to talking, he would have set about sedating himself so it wouldn't be a possibility.

“So we fought.”

“We _are_ fighting,” Misha said, still not looking at him. 

“Over what? A stupid tweet?” Jensen got into his space again. 

“No.” Misha glared at him, glared harder when Jensen grabbed a glass off the nested stack on the dresser and poured himself a serving of the vodka. “Because you lied to me, because you're scared.”

“Tell me more about myself,” Jensen said, grinning over the rim of his glass.

“Jensen.” Misha's sharpness let Jensen know his attempt at charm had failed. “What the hell are you doing?” 

Jensen petted Misha's fingers, and the vodka in his glass rippled with his trembling. 

“I'm defending myself,” he said. He fixed him with a serious stare. “I didn't lie.”

Misha laughed a small, bitter laugh. “You love me. But don't tweet a picture of your fucking eye, because that—that's just obscene. Fuck off with that, Jen.”

“What, you think we should make it public? Hell, I can barely explain our relationship to myself, let alone thousands of people who've never even met us! Sounds like a plan, Mish. Let's do that.”

“Of course I don't think we should do that,” Misha said. “But at the same time, I have no interest in policing every single thing I think, say, and do!”

“I'm not asking you to do all that. Just police your Tweets.” 

“Because you 'love' me,” he said, twisting the verb into a sneer.

“Yeah, that's right,” Jensen said, his voice husky. “I love the things you think, say, and do. Don't ever change. Just—let me be for you, all right? Not for them.” He gestured to the invisible audience. “Don't turn me into a show.”

That sentence struck Misha like a physical blow. He set down his drink and bowed his head. His hands groped blindly at the edge of the dresser. 

“God, is that what you thought I was doing? I was just happy,” he whispered. “Fuck, no wonder—” 

“Whoa, hey, no—”

“I'm sorry.” Misha bowed his head, and his groping hands turned to fists. The cords stood out on his forearms, the backs of his hands, and damn it. Jensen felt lost. Misha had so _many_ emotions, all of them intense. Right now, he was about to explode. 

Jensen palmed his hard shoulder, pushed it back, opened him up and stepped inside. That was all he had to do. The pent-up energy vibrating through the other man's frame came unleashed, and his violent kiss cut the flesh of Jensen's lips against his teeth. 

“Missed you—” Misha's words went right into Jensen's mouth. He inhaled them like his first gasp of air. The thought of never having this again, the flat, hard planes of Misha's body pressed against his, his palms slicking over Misha's back and ribs, Misha's mouth, his tongue, his eyes, no longer narrowed with anger or blurred with exhaustion, almost manic with happiness.

Jensen said, “Gonna put you to sleep.” 

Misha grinned against his mouth, chuckled low and dirty, and kissed him again. “I wouldn't plan on that.”

But in the end, Jensen won that argument, won it with sweat and gasps and cum, and as he tucked his nose into Misha's damp hair and listened to his deep and steady breathing, he knew the next step he had to take. He loved this man. It was stupid and destructive and dangerous and a lot of other adjectives; it was demon blood, but he loved him.

He had to get him back on the Show.

VII. NOVEMBER 14th, 2011  
Jensen hadn't wanted a formal appointment on the books and in the records, so he lurked in the hall outside Sera Gamble's office until Tina, her assistant, had to visit the bathroom. That didn't take long. Tina's tiny bladder, combined with her thirty-cup-a-day coffee addiction, ensured he only had to wait a few minutes.

The bathroom door closed behind Tina as the office door closed behind Jensen, and he swung around the gatekeeper's desk and opened the door to Sera's inner sanctum.

Sera looked up from her computer and he felt the first of many pangs of guilt. Her screen was crashing from all the open browser windows, and the fax machine was booked forever. 

She turned her back on all that and gave him her entire attention.

“What can I do for you?” 

He checked first to make sure her office door was shut and then sat down, scrubbing his palms over his denim-clad thighs. “This is personal.”

“Okay,” Sera said, leaning towards him, her face and body language open. 

“Misha,” Jensen said.

Her face darkened.

“I know,” she said. “Losing him has been hard on all of us. It's been hard on the Show.” She gestured at the barely-controlled chaos around her. “But I really think once the fans accept his loss—”

“I don't want them to.” Jensen tried to meet her eyes, but his face felt swollen and hot with embarrassment, so he kept his gaze on the edge of her desk. A piece of paper fluttered in the breeze from the air recirculation. “I can't accept it,” he said hoarsely.

“Um.”

That little syllable strolled in, looked around, and noped out of the conversation. 

He couldn't look at her.

“I understand,” she said, her voice careful and measured, “that you two were—are—close, but that can't ever be a factor in my decision, as a showrunner, for what direction to take the Show. Can you understand the position you're putting me in, coming here like this?”

“I understand it,” Jensen said. “I wouldn't be here if I weren't ready to put it all on the line. Sera.” _Please don't force me to lay this out for you._ He met and held her gaze, though his heart pounded so hard his vision jarred in time to its beats.

She held his gaze for a long moment, the color draining from her face.

“Is this an ultimatum?” 

He nodded. Swallowed.

“You'd kill this Show? Jared's career? You're willing to do that. You'd go that far.”

He nodded again, and he couldn't hold her gaze any longer. His eyes dropped back to the trembling piece of paper. He could relate to that little piece of paper. 

The silence was thick and uncomfortable.

She exhaled and leaned back in her chair. 

Conversationally, she said, “Did you know they're talking about replacing me? Yeah. So bringing this to me now is kind of shitty, Jensen. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I know,” Jensen said, and his voice was a clotted wreck. “I'm sorry.” 

“No backing down, though, even knowing that? Even knowing that working him back into the story is going to ruin any chance I have of keeping my fucking job?” Her anger hit him like a brick, dense and heavy, and Jensen flinched. 

It didn't stop him, though. “If the Show is dead, none of us will have jobs.”

She growled. “Right now I'm having fun thinking of the various ways I could kill off Dean Winchester, you best believe that, bud. It wouldn't save me, but it'd feel good.” 

“The fans love Cas. You bring him back—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the pitch,” she snapped. “Get the hell out of my office. You've just added five more hours to my thirty hour day. Won't have many more of those, but you'll get your boyfriend back, and that's what matters, right?”

As he stumbled out of her office, rubber-jointed with relief and adrenaline, she muttered, “Actors!”

VIII. FEBRUARY 10th, 2012  
Jensen went to pick Misha up from the airport. Misha was alone this time; from his texts, Vicki flat-out refused to be uprooted again. She hadn't forgiven the Show for what it had done to her family. 

Jensen wished he had enough of a soul to feel bad about that, but instead, he tapped the steering wheel and sang along with the radio. He had the windows rolled down so the wind snatched the lyrics from his mouth. It was steel-gray Vancouver winter out there and he couldn't care less. If he tried to contain his happiness inside a snug, buttoned-down car, it would explode.

He pulled into the queue in the loading zone, scanning the crowd for dark, messy hair, blue eyes, a knot of people laughing hysterically. Any of those things would be signs of Mish.

Something collided with the car. Misha's laughter, from behind his head. 

He twisted to look. 

Misha had seen the open windows and elected to throw himself through one. Of course he did. Half his body hung outside the car, but he grabbed Jensen's face and stuck his long tongue in his mouth, both of them laughing around the messy kiss.

“You're going to kill yourself, genius,” Jensen said, breaking away, wiping away slobber with the side of his hand. 

“Paralyze myself is more likely,” Misha said, not giving a damn. 

Jensen put the car in park (it was a miracle he hadn't let it drift into the car in front of him) and grabbed Misha's bags where he'd left them, strewn on the asphalt for any asshole to run over. He put them in the trunk, laughing as Misha fought to extricate himself, legs kicking frantically.

He'd missed him.

He grabbed Misha around his hips and hauled him from the window, only to press him against the car (some distant part of his mind bugled alarm, wanted him to scan for inquisitive fans wielding iPhone cameras, but it was a very distant part and he ignored it) to suck on his earlobe. Misha groaned and writhed against him, his erection palpable through his crappy corduroy pants. Jensen bracketed his hips with his legs, grinding hard against him, kissing him, only moments away from—pray for him—taking him right there. 

Misha was the one to break the kiss and shove him away. “Get in the goddamned car,” he growled.

“Yes, sir,” Jensen said, grinning so hard his cheeks and the back of his ears hurt. 

They drove down the interstate. Misha hadn't asked him to roll up the windows, so Jensen left them down. Later, he reckoned the slap of cold air on his cock was the reason why he almost swerved into oncoming traffic when Misha pulled down his fly. 

IX. SEPTEMBER 7th, 2014  
Jensen stared down at the script for the much-ballyhooed 200th episode. His fingers clenched, crumpling the paper, and his eyes widened until it seemed they'd fall out of his skull. 

[[DEAN: Is that in the show?  
MARIE: Oh, no. Siobhan and Kristen are a couple in real life.  
MARIE: You can't spell subtext without s-e-x.]]

you can't spell subtext without s-e-x are a couple in real life real life are a couple s-e-x

Jensen exploded out of his chair.

The walk to Jeremy's office was swopped clean out of his head. When he returned to himself, he was slamming the script down on Jeremy's desk and roaring, “What the hell is this?”

“The script for the 200th episode? Says so, anyway.” Jeremy pointed at the header.

“Not that, you asshole, I mean this,” and Jensen's shaking finger stabbed down at the offending passage.

“Oh, that,” Jeremy said, still weirdly calm. “That's known as either a reference or a shout-out. Depends on the milieu.”

Jensen all but fell into a chair and cradled his head in his hands. “I don't think you're getting this, though I can't understand why the hell not. You've seen me stick my tongue down his throat enough times. You're about to _out me_ on _national television,_ you _son of a bitch!_ ”

“Relax,” Jeremy said.

Jensen glared up at him through his lashes. 

“I think I need to explain.”

“You bet you need to explain,” he said, voice shaking all over the place.

Jeremy leaned over the desk. “I know things are tough right now,” he said. Jensen only goggled at him. Yeah, sure shit things were tough right now. So the answer was to make them tougher? He was too astonished to scream anymore.

“I say that so you know I'm not judging you for this,” he said. “You have a right to be concerned, but listen to me, please. What you have with Misha's been going on for years. Some of the fans have figured it out, but nobody takes it seriously, and you know why? The whole shipping concept. You've learned a little about that.”

“More than I ever wanted to know,” Jensen grumbled. The adrenaline drained away, leaving him cold and exhausted.

Jeremy regarded him kindly through the thick rims of his geek glasses. “If we left the ships out of this episode, we'd be missing the fandom's heart. So we acknowledge it, but Jensen, acknowledgement doesn't equal confirmation. If anything, by pointing it out and calling it a ship, we legitimize that read of the text, not the read that goes, 'this is really happening.' The conspiracy theorists keep that, okay?”

“But then why not stuff in there about me and Jared?”

“Covered it with the boys by the car,” Jeremy said firmly. “Look, I know you're doing your utmost to support him. I know what it's costing you. I'm not inviting any more trouble to your doorstep in that department.”

“Yeah,” Jensen said, clearing his throat, “thanks for that.” 

Jeremy reached across the desk to clap him on the shoulder. “Jay, I love you. You have to know that.” 

“I know it,” Jensen said, and he scrubbed his face with his hands. He smiled, but it was watery. “I guess I just acted real stupid, huh?”

“Understandably so, but yeah, stupid.” Jeremy grinned at him, then answered his ringing cell phone, so Jensen let himself out of the office.

He wanted to go back to his trailer, maybe take a nap to reset his burned-out adrenal glands, but instead he detoured to Jared's trailer, except that Jared wasn't there. The gym trailer, then.

Jared was in the middle of a set, his hair dripping sweat—the makeup people would murder him—but he smiled in greeting as he pushed the bar up off his chest. White earbuds dangled from his ears. Jensen straddled a chair and opened up Pandora to listen to while he waited.


End file.
